You Can Now Send People Private Messages on Instagram

2013: the year when there were a thousand different ways to send your friend a cute picture of your cat. Yes, there is now yet another outlet for electronically sharing a picture. You can e-mail it as an attachment; text it; Facebook Message it; Snapchat it; WhatsApp it; direct message it on Twitter—and, as of today, you can send it as a private message on Instagram, too.

Instagram co-founder Kevin Systrom announced this morning to a room full of tech journalists that the app would be introducing the feature—called Instagram Direct—immediately. “For us, communication is very core,” he said. “It’s not about photography necessarily.” (We all follow at least one dude who constantly posts pictures of “nature” and buildings at odd angles who is likely scowling at that latter comment.) Instagram Direct will allow users to share an image or video with 15 or fewer friends; messages can only be delivered between people who follow each other on the service, so don’t bother sending Rihanna that selfie you took on your phone in May that you immediately made your OKCupid profile picture.

We have thoughts!

1) This is now the second time Instagram has closely followed a popular tech app. When Vine videos were all the rage, Instagram introduced a video element, too. While there were a spate of choppy videos of dance floors and apple picking adventures uploaded for a bit, usage never quite reached the heights of buzz-i-ness that Vine did. It’ll be interesting to see if private messaging—which seems to be an attempt to capture some of the Snapchat action—similarly makes a splashy debut before becoming something of an afterthought.

2) How long until the first Anthony Weiner style “scandal” in which some celebrity accidentally posts a racy pic to their feed instead of privately to their celebrity paramour? Or, on a less “grand” scale, how many friendships do you think will be ruined by accidental public postings of screenshots of text messages (intended to be sent privately to one’s gang of confidante BFFs)?

3) Can they please introduce a feature where you can just save an Instagram picture for yourself?! We—and others in the VF.com office who have copped to a similar “strategy”—are sick of posting pictures to our feed and then immediately deleting them in order to secure a well-cropped and filtered picture of the smoothie we just blended for our own private pleasure.

Josh DuboffJosh Duboff is a VF.com staff writer, based in New York, who covers entertainment and culture.